Santa Ana officials address concerns after shooting

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SANTA ANA Hoping to respond to questions in the Vietnamese community, more than a half-dozen Santa Ana officials Monday evening stood before reporters from Little Saigon's media organizations to relate what they could about the officer-involved shooting death of a Westminster man early Friday.

A group that included the mayor and three other council members, the city manager, the interim police chief and the Police Department's spokesman convened before reporters, primarily from the Viet-

namese-language media. Officials explained the protocols for handling an officer-involved shooting, and expressed their condolences to the family of the man who was shot as well as their concern for the two officers involved in the shooting.

“We did get some concerns from the Vietnamese media in particular, and we wanted to make sure we were being as open and transparent as possible,” said Carlos Rojas, the interim police chief, in explaining why officials gathered to answer questions. “There's always concern about misinformation and misperception when you have an incident such as this. It was real important for us to try to communicate as many facts as we can without jeopardizing any type of investigation.”

Police were patrolling a west Santa Ana neighborhood when officers in a patrol car saw a man, identified as Binh Van Nguyen, 39, sitting in the back seat of a Toyota. Two uniformed officers approached the car in the 200 block of Maxine Street, and the man jumped into the front seat. The officers asked him to get out of the car, but he started the vehicle, Santa Ana Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said.

The officers opened fire with handguns when Nguyen drove the car at them, officials said. Rojas described one of the officers as a veteran, the other as experienced.

The shooting took place about 12:45 a.m. in an area known for gang and drug activity, police said.

Officer-involved shootings in Anaheim in July sparked days of protests that turned violent. After the death of a mentally ill homeless man in 2011, vigils were held in Fullerton, and three former officers face criminal charges. Rojas said a protest took place Sunday where Nguyen was shot but that it was peaceful.

The officers were placed on paid administrative leave pending a finding that they were fit to return to duty, Rojas said.

He said the department wanted to ensure that it was communicating with the Vietnamese media “or missing some groundswell that may be out there in the community.”

Kenneth Nguyen, who chairs the city's parks commission and serves as unofficial ambassador to the Vietnamese community, said the briefing has helped defuse tensions.

He had received numerous calls from community leaders following the protest Sunday. He contacted Rojas and other city officials Monday to see if they could organize the briefing.

The shooting had been covered widely in Viet- namese-language media amid concerns the shooting wasn't justified and that the officers weren't in uniform when they confronted Binh Van Nguyen.

“I haven't seen any city act so quickly to solve the problem,” he said. “It's like fire prevention in a way, before the fire started. Instead of fire department running away from it, it tried to put out the fire.”

The shooting of Nguyen is under investigation by the Orange County District Attorney's Office, as is standard in officer-involved shootings. Prosecutors will determine whether the shooting was justified. Such probes can take months. The Police Department conducts two inquiries – one to determine whether the person who was shot had committed a crime at the time, and one to determine whether department policy was followed.

The shooting is the second involving an officer in Santa Ana this year. Earlier in January, police shot and injured a 43-year-old man when he came out of a garage with a handgun and did not comply with officers' orders to drop the weapon, police said.

“They're completely unrelated, so we don't see this as being an uptick, necessarily, or a pattern or anything like that,” Rojas said. Officials said they recalled four or five officer-involved shootings in the city last year.Police said they found drug paraphernalia in the car in which Nguyen was sitting. Attorney Michael Giusti said Nguyen had at least three felony drug convictions. Giusti said he intended to file a claim against the city on the family's behalf.

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